Positional Representations...

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  Positional Representations...
  July 25, 2008, 08:11 PM Jay Tedeschi

  Positional Representations… what do you use them for? I found myself in a jam recently because I needed an exploded assembly, but needed it for some really high quality renderings, so I wanted to use Inventor Studio. 
   
  The problem becomes how exactly to construct an exploded assembly when you are unable to use a Presentation File. The answer, obviously, is to use a positional rep. So… first things first, I have created a New Positional Representation and named it “Inventor Studio”. As you can see from the image below, I have also created a View Representation named the same thing and locked it, once I have the desired view and perspective angle set. More on this trick in a moment.
   
  In any case, once the new positional rep is active I now simply override the constraints for the components I wish to move. This is accessed from the right click menu for any constraint other than an iMate, again, see the image below.
   
  Granted, it is not as easy as using the Presentation File environment, and it is nowhere close to being as easy as Showcase, however there are some advantages. With this assembly that certainly was the case… the array of fasteners that held the valve cover on were all constrained together, so once I change the distance value for the first instance, they all moved simultaneously. Nice!
  Now, remember I said that there was an advantage to having a locked view rep? Well, once you are in the Inventor Studio environment, you can set a camera from a current view… which is exactly what I do now. 
   
  And if anything ever happens to change the camera view, we can always restore our locked view rep and then restore a new camera configuration from that view. And now, just a bit of Inventor Studio eye candy and we're done.
   
  Well, that’s it for today. Hope this was informative and hope everyone has a great weekend.

  2 Comments | Add Comment The Gear Box > Inventor 2008, Images, Tips

Comments

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  July 29, 2008 01:02 AM Stefaan Boel

  Jay, I would rather do this in Inventor Studio itself. You have the possibility to animate constraints so why not use that? The advantage is that afterwards you can also render the exploded view to a video if you do it in the right order!

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  August 6, 2008 03:25 PM Jay Tedeschi

  Good Point Stefaan, I did not think of that. We were trying to quickly do an image comparison between Inventor Studio and Showcase so my mindset was pretty much fixated on setting up a static exploded assembly, much as you would with Showcase, which is what led to the use of a PosRep.